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Friday, October 5, 2012

Soft Rainbow Sandwich Bread

This is a really fun bread for school lunches and anything that your kids like that includes bread!

I just took a very good bread recipe and made it into a RAINBOWBREAD RECIPE; my process tutorial is below with the recipe for this great bread (even without the awesome colors).

The recipe makes 2 loaves and is for a basic very soft white bread that could easily be changed to a wheat bread {just use 3 cups wheat flour and 3 cups white flour in place of the 6 cups white flour}.

Its actually perfect for sandwiches because it stays soft {I wrapped one loaf in press & seal wrap and foil and froze it for later and the other loaf I just put in a gallon sized ziplock bag} and is easy to slice into normal sandwich bread thickness. I found the original recipe here.

This bread also makes great toast, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. Yum!

Ingredients to Make 2 Loaves:

-2 cups warm water (about 110 degrees)

-2/3 cup sugar

-1 1/2 tsp salt

-1/4 cup canola or vegetable oil

-6 cups flour

-1 1/2 tbsp yeast

-food coloring

Process:{If you don't have a bread-maker you can visit the original recipe page to see the manual process.}

1. Combine the ingredients (except the food coloring) in your bread-maker pan in the order listed.

2. Set bread-maker to dough setting and let the bread-maker do it's thing.

3. Once the dough is finished, remove the dough from the pan onto a lightly floured surface.

5. I placed each piece in a bowl because I had intended on mixing in the coloring be hand in the individual bowls.

6. Mix in the food coloring to each dough ball to get the colors of the rainbow; since the food coloring is liquid you will probably need to mix in a bit more flour with the coloring to keep a nice, not too sticky dough{make sure you keep them separate and you probably don't want to set them on your counter, they may stain it with the colors}:RED: red food coloringORANGE: a combination of red and yellow food coloringYELLOW: yellow food coloringGREEN: most basic packages of food coloring have green in them, although if yours doesn't mix a combination of yellow and blueBLUE: blue food coloringVIOLET/PURPLE: a combination of red and blue food coloringI started with the red and it took me a while to get the color mixed well and this is what my hand looked like!

Yes, my nails are painted red and they look very close to the color of my fingers!

After getting a red hand I decided maybe using my standing mixer with the dough hook would be a better idea; and it was a lot easier and I didn't end up with multicolored hands.

I mixed the yellow first since it is the lightest color and I didn't want to have to wash the bowl between colors.

Then orange, this is what it looked like while mixing. I found that mixing on high (10) worked best and make sure you love the arm down so it doesn't bounce around.

I went on to then mix the green, blue and lastly the violet.This is what my mixing bowl looked like when I was finished...

This is what the awesome dough pieces looked like...

7. To assemble the RAINBOW, lightly grease your work surface {I like this better than adding more flour} and your rolling pin.8. Roll the red out to a roughly 11 x 14 inch rectangle, then place it on another greased surface {I used a 11 x 14 inch cutting board}

9. Repeat the rolling process for all other colors (oil surface and rolling pin before each color to prevent sticking); layering them on top of each other in the order of the rainbow. {Stretch as needed to make them as close to the same size as you can; the oil makes them easy to move if needed.}

1st: Red2nd: Orange3rd: Yellow4th: Green5th: Blue6th: Violet* If you want the violet on the outside you can reverse the layering order.This is what mine looked like once I had all of the colors layered...

10. Remove dough layers from the cutting board onto greased counter top. 11. Roll the dough to out into a larger rectangle; sorry I didn't measure but I think it was about 1/2 inch thick.

16. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.17. Place loaf pans on the top of the oven, cover with a clean kitchen towel and allow to rise about 30-45 minutes (the heat from the preheating oven will help the dough rise).

This is what my loaves looked like just before I put them in the oven {I didn't think they rose much, but I was okay with that.}

18. Bake loaves in preheated oven for about 30 minutes.

This is what they looked like when I removed them from the oven; they definitely rose more!

19. Wait 5-10 minutes and remove bread from pans, place on wire rack to cool completely (cool completely before cutting, to be able to cut nice slices).

This loaf didn't come out of the pan very easily, but the inside still looks great!

Getting ready for sandwiches.

Yum! Big Mr. J's sandwich for his school lunch! He loved it and all of his friends asked for the recipe so that their moms can make it for them. :D

125 comments:

im commenting this here because im not sure how to just comment but this recipe didntwork at all for me ive made it twice and both times the dye didnt do very well and when i cooked it (exactly like the recipe says) it didn t rise at all and the inside is still doughy. im a really good baker and i get really upset when something i make doesnt work out right and this is twice ive made it! excuse my poor punctuation just not feeling it right now. HELP what did i do wrong :(((((((((((((((

Check these things maybe.. is your yeast fresh? And what kind? I'm not fond of rapid rise, and I don't use a bread machine. Just my kitchenaid mixer. Also, check your oven temp to make sure it's functioning properly. Get an in-oven thermometer. I use bread flour, cause the additional gluten makes for a fluffier bread. Try it again (and I actually use more yeast and only 1/2c sugar for the standard recipe) let the hot-ish water/sugar/yeast proof in the bowl first to make sure it's good but don't mess with the food coloring. This recipe makes fabulous dinner rolls too. If it turns out OK without the coloring, try color pastes instead of liquid.. find it at baking supply stores or craft stores (like Michael's).. maybe the excess liquid is throwing yours off.

As kids at easter my dad would purchase this at a very famous bakery in Chicago. Since we live in Nv now, I had to figure out how to make this for my kids. I have made from scratch, and also from frozen dough. For frozen dough, let defrost, if possible cut pieces while still frozen, you want to work pretty fast since the dough has been processed already, so u want to work quickly and for best results Use gel or paste coloring. If old fashioned food coloring is the only option use a little at a time adding flour to keep the dough from being sticky. After frz dough us plyable, use hands or dough hook to add color. Roll out and continue with her previous instructions. This bread can also be made into long french baguette bread and sliced for finger Sammie's as a party appetizer. You can make the bread in blue or pink for baby showers, orange and black for Halloween Sammie's, or go all out and make your team colors for games! Endless possibilities are waiting for you to amaze your friends and family all year round! Pin your creations here so we can have everyone's favorite bread!

Someone please help! I cannot get the dough to turn any colors.. I have tried two different batches now.. It never fully turns a color or even hardly a hint of the color. I use my kitchen aid mixer and have tried by hand and nothing seems to be working

I added a lot of color to each 1/6 (like 1/2 of a tear drop food coloring mini bottle) and le it go around mixer for 2 minutes. Then took it out and added a line down the middle of the section and kneaded by hand (holding it not on counter to avoid stain) and kept kneading it and pulling it and mixing it until was pretty marbly but I could tell what color it was. It took on a better, more uniform color when i rolled it with rolling pin. This was super fun, but pretty much exhausted my food dye stadh ;)

Thanks for the above reply! You do have to use a fair amount of food coloring and let the mixer with the dough hook mix it for several minutes to make the color strong and blended well. Let me know how it goes!

I used food colouring gel and it coloured very well. I used just a tiny bit and got very vibrant colours. Also, no need to add more flour if you do this :) thanks for the recipe! My daughter's first birthday is on St.Patrick's day and we are throwing a rainbow party. We are going to have yummy rainbow sandwiches now! Thanks!

I couldn't get the color to incorporate very well into mine either. But I cut the recipe in half so I would only end up with one loaf. I think the dough pieces were just too small to work in the mixer with the food coloring. I ended up doing it by hand and the dough pieces look more marbled than anything...but I'm sure my 4 year old will still enjoy it :)

My friend and i just made four batches! It is so good. But we did it by hand and mixing the colors took so long. We went though all the food coloring making them and I think we should have used paste coloring instead of the liquid, it made it more marbled. We still love it though!

I tried this last night but the dough never rose (it came out of the bread machine perfectly) and when I cooked it, it didn't rise. I used flour instead of oil when I was rolling it out. I am really hoping that this is where I went wrong. Any idea? I am going to recoup and try again tomorrow. I used the gel frosting color from Walton, I got them at Michaels, it did not take too much. The color was fantastic, now if I can only get the bread to rise!

Was your yeast fresh or did it pass the expiration date? Not rising would have to do with the yeast. To make sure my yeast is active I always put it in the water with a teaspoon of sugar and let sit for 10 minutes. If it is foamy it is ready to go.

Made this today. Turned out great. My daughter ate 5 slices when she got home from school. The only thing I changed was I only added 1/4 cup sugar. For coloring I used gel food colors and they worked great. Thank you for the recipe.

Hint: This recipe is super easy to adapt for the food processor if you don't have a (working) bread machine and don't want to knead. Mix the yeast, water, and sugar in one bowl and let foam; put the flour and salt in another. Add 1 c. flour and 1/3 c. yeast mixture to the food processor, and food coloring, and process for 30 seconds. Add a little less than a tablespoon of oil and process for about a minute. Take that dough out and do it 5 more times. I went from yellow to orange ... to green to avoid having color contamination. Proceed as usual! Looks awesome and smells lovely in the oven.

its always fun every once in awhile to give your kids something special... its not like we feed them this kind of stuff daily. Nevermind the food coloring the bread recipe itself is great and can be completely organic if you choose... not sure why you felt the need to blast your rude opinion on here :-/

Thank you Anonymous so much for defending my recipe! My kids eat great, they almost never have anything like this; and if you look at the other recipes I've posted I cook everything I feed them from scratch! I don't think that an occasional treat of something with food coloring is a problem; I know that my kids are definitely eating better foods than a lot of our population! You decide what to feed your family; I clearly state that this recipe can be made without the coloring and you could totally use natural food dyes if you so desire! Enjoy everyone!

there is a food problem today cause parents dont teach their kids what is healthy. homemade bread with a little food coloring in it is way better than store bought bread. I dont understand why someone would complain about this as you have clearly stated you can use natural dye, artificial dye or no dye at all. I have my loaves proofing right now. and cant wait for the kids to see it when they get home. Thank you so much for this recipe. I truly love it. want to try it next time with natural dye.

Lady you need to seriously grow up. If you want to eat sprouted 18 grain bread with tofu, etc., fine just don't go dissing other peoples' recipes. We all have choices we make. A little food coloring will not KILL anyone!!! Honestly....

Thanks for defending this recipe! I agree, you decide what to feed the special people in your life and a little occasional consumption of food coloring isn't going to hurt anyone! Thanks for commenting!

Omg we, my daughter who is 4.5 and I, made this tonight!!!! I forgot my my rolling pin so I did it by hand. We had soooo much fun coloring the dough balls. She loved every minute and so did I. Thank you for pinning. As much as I hate to bake I think this will be something we make again!!! Thank you!!!

Hi I just made it today I'm waiting to put it in the oven now!! My boys LOVED helping with the colors and think it is the coolest thing in the world and can't wait to eat it!!! Thanks so much for the recipe!!!! I'm going to save the 2nd loaf to take with for Easter dinner.

I so suck at making bread. No matter how many times I try my bread comes out of my bread machine like a hockey puck. tastes great but very dense. My mother even watched me to see what I was doing wrong and couldn't figure it out and we have the same bread machine. So I am going to try this with store bought frozen dough this weekend. But if anyone can tell my why my bread machine hates me I would love the help. :)

Check your yeast; if its stored in a cabinet or out of date, that could be your problem. I always store my yeast in the freezer and I just use basic active dry yeast; I never buy the special "breadmaker yeast". Hope this helps!

Check and see that your breadmaker is getting hot enough. I realized that mine wasn't heating to a high enough temperature. I kept it around for a while for the kneading feature (it saves time), but the space it took up wasn't worth it.

If I am using the recipe and instructions for making the "Soft White Bread" without a bread machine, at what point do I stop and add the food coloring: after mixing in the flour? After mixing in flour and initial kneading? After letting it rise one hour? After rising one hour and kneading again . . ? (You get the idea.)

In Austalia a treat called fairy bread is served at parties--generally bread and butter, cut into shapes and covered in 100s and 1000s (we call them sprinkles). This would make a wild fairy bread. My colleague in the university science department is holding a food science summer camp for 8th and 9th graders in June, and I am posting this as a possible activity.

If your bread stuck in the pan, line it lengthwiseand widthwise wise parchment paper that extends over the sides of the pan on all sides. When done, pick up by the parchment paper. Guarantee it will not stuck.

If your bread stuck in the pan, line it lengthwiseand widthwise wise parchment paper that extends over the sides of the pan on all sides. When done, pick up by the parchment paper. Guarantee it will not stuck.

First of all nothing here says u need to feed your children this. Nothing in this is poison and if your reference is towards the food colouring either dont add it or use all natural ones made from fruits and vegetable juices. So unless u grow and process all your own food your probably feeding your kids worse poison then this. Its very rude to comment like this if you dont like dont dont use it.

You should be able to scroll down to the bottom of the post, click the "Print Friendly" button; then a window will pop up and you can click on anything you don't want to print to save ink. Hope this helps!

This is such a cool idea. I am making it right now. I saw the post on pinterest at around 9 tonight and told my husband I wanted to try it, my 14yr old got up out of bed to see if I was really going to make it- my 8 yr old son will wake up to this cool bread for toast. It's not often I can bake something that is "healthy" that both my kids will like. Thanks so much! For those who are freaking out about a little food coloring, if you don't like it don't use it, but you don't have the right to be a jerk to those of us who don't see a problem with a treat once in a while.

Just made a Red, White, & Blue loaf... it's waiting to go into the oven. I actually found white icing tinting that made the dough a lot whiter! :-) Can't wait to see it all baked up! Thanks for this recipe, it's so neat!

I've made this a few times and my kids (and hubby) absolutely love it! The only thing I haven't figured out is to get the Kitchen Aid to do the work for me - using the dough hook, the little ball of dough with the food gel dye just runs around the outside of the bowl. Lol! My daughter and I enjoy the process of rolling in the colours - so cool. Thanks so much for sharing this great recipe and ignoring the rude & ignorant comments.

My daughter and I made this today and it was wonderful! Easy even without a bread machine. We halfed it before adding food coloring so we would have one white loaf (for the hubby's lunch too). The white doubled during rising but the colored only got a little bigger, which ended up fine during baking. Thanks for the recipe. I read all the comments before baking and they helped a lot.

Thank you for sharing this. I was over on disboard.com looking over the Disney themed movie nights, and your recipe was featured there. Many years ago my mother in law tells me that there was a bakery in her town that made bread in colors for fancy tea parties, and while I don't think they made it rainbow, I am certain my kids and husband are going to enjoy it just this way! Thanks again.

If I use frozen bread dough... Do I just let it thaw in the refrigerator then color, roll out, roll up, wait 30 mins then bake or do I let it rise some before I color it or longer after but before I roll it up? I actually tried it the first way I described and it worked beautifully except it didn't rise much....

Good question; I would do it just as you stated. Although, it may not have risen as much since the dough could still slightly cool from being previously refrigerated; you could try letting it rise for 45 -60 minutes before baking. That way you can be sure that the inside temperature of the dough is able to reach room temp and rise. Hope this helps!

I made this and can confirm that halving the recipe for one loaf works perfectly, and the colors are still vibrant and lovely with wheat flour. I did let it rise a second time for a full hour (after rolling up the colors) and that seemed to make a difference in the shape. It turned out absolutely gorgeous and tasty. Thank you!

When I was a child my mother would color her homemade potato bread for different holidays and she'd use it in my lunch sandwiches at school. I was the only one who had colored bread for all the different holidays! St. Pat's Day=green, Valentines Day=Pink, etc. So cool!

This will be a great idea for making heart sandwiches for the kids Valentine party using red and white dough. After mixing the colors into the dough maybe you could form into long rolls, twist them together, roll it out and then roll into loaf shape or just twist it and let it rise. After baking use a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut for sandwiches. (The possibilities are endless.) But I especially love the rainbow colors. This is also a good tasting bread. Thanks for a great recipe.

I got a bread machine recently and after making 2 successful loaves of french bread decided I was ready to tackle this. My loaves are cooling now. I can't wait for my daughter's next sandwich. My loaves are a little less loaf shaped than I would have hoped but for a first shot they seem to have come out awesome. As for the person who complained about food coloring in the food and bribing kids to eat healthy I wish them a sense of whimsy. The rainbow version isn't a bread you make every day. It's clearly meant to be something fun and special. The base recipe is still far better than even the so called healthy breads you buy in a store. It lacks artificial ingredients. To you I say thank you. I now have a base knowledge I can use to make an endless number of marbled breads. My daughter is excited for Rainbow Dash sandwiches tomorrow even if my loaves are a little off in shape lol

I have been making this bread every summer for 5 years without a mixer or bread machine and it turns out perfect every single time! I made some tonight after my 7yo Son requested it. I guess he knows it is rainbow bread season 😊 The only struggle for us is getting the color mixed in the dough, we use gel Wilton food coloring and add plenty of flour to our hands when we are blending it in and 10 minutes before the bread is done baking I always brush melted butter over the tops and then again once it is fresh from the oven. Thank you for a fantastic bread recipe we will be making it for years to come!

I have made this the past 3 years, and my kids look forward to it more than any other "special lunches" they get. We're (probably) getting a snow day tomorrow, so I'll make it then :) I have found that no amount of mixing can get the food colouring to look at beautiful and uniform as yours, so I've actually started separating the liquid into 6 bowls and adding the colours to each bowl, before adding the flour. Requires a bit of math (and more dishes), but the colours are amazing!Thanks again for the great idea!

About Me

Hi, I'm Jacqueline!
I am a happy mom and wife. I love to create things! I am passionate about recycling and repurposing, being good to nature and using what we can from the earth. I love foraging, living off the land, art and cooking! This is the place where I will share with you my artsy project ideas, fun useful tips and favorite recipes {a lot of recipes; since I cook homemade meals everyday and am constantly trying new ones}! Enjoy!